Old postcards Hmelnichchine

Every card in this section is dated 1978, and together they form a survey of the Khmelnytskyi region as it was presented at the time. The set is mostly about monuments: memorial complexes to soldiers who died in the war in Khmelnytskyi, Starokostiantyniv, Dunaivtsi, Krasyliv, Teofipol and the village of Letava, the “Science, Labour, Space” sculpture group in Khmelnytskyi, a monument to the victory of Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s troops in 1648, and a dugout museum in Slavuta.

For architecture collectors the three fortresses stand out. The Old Fortress of Kamianets-Podilskyi rises above a loop of the Smotrych River and is linked to the town by a narrow rock carrying the Castle Bridge; it is first mentioned in a charter of Prince Yurii Koriatovych from 1374. The castle of Starokostiantyniv was founded in 1561 by Prince Vasyl-Kostiantyn Ostrozky on a cape where the Sluch and Ikopot rivers meet, with the main work finished by 1571.

The third is Letychiv, where a 1978 card pairs the monument to Ustym Karmaliuk with the remains of the fortress. Rebuilding of the timber-and-earth castle in stone began in 1579 on the orders of Jan Potocki, starosta of Kamianets. Karmaliuk, who led a peasant movement in Podillia from 1813 to 1835 and became a folk hero, is buried in Letychiv; his five-metre monument by the tower went up in 1974.

Local historians can use these vintage postcards as a record of how the region’s memorials and castles were laid out in the late 1970s.

More sights

Views of Crimea · Petrodvorets · Pechora-Ilych Nature Reserve · Kabardino-Balkaria

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Khmelnitsky

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